FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111  
112   113   114   115   116   >>  
r be forgiven; the striker must die, either _privately_ or publicly. No people on earth are less given to excess in eating or drinking, than the Spaniards; the _Olio_, or _Olla_, a kind of soup and _Bouilli_, is all that is to be found at the table of some great men: the table of a _Bourgeois_ of Paris is better served than many _grandees_ of Spain; their chocolate, lemonade, iced water, fruits, &c. are their chief luxuries; and the chocolate is, in some houses, a prodigious annual expense, as it is offered to every body who comes in, and some of the first houses in Madrid expend twenty thousand _livres_ a year in chocolate, iced waters, &c. The grandees of Spain think it beneath their dignity to look into accounts, and therefore leave the management of their household expenses to servants, who often plunder and defraud them of great sums of money. Unlike the French, the Spaniards (like the English) very properly look upon able physicians and surgeons in a very respectable light:--Is it not strange, that the French nation should trust their health and lives in the hands of men, they are apt to think unworthy of their intimacy or friendship?--Men, who must have had a liberal education, and who ought not to be trusted in sickness, if their society was not to be coveted in health. Perhaps the Spanish physicians, who of all others have the least pretensions, are the most caressed. In fevers they encourage their patients to eat, thinking it necessary, where the air is so subtile, to put something into the body for the distemper to feed upon; they bleed often, and in both arms, that the blood may be drawn forth _equally_; the surgeons do not bleed, but a set of men called _sangerros_ perform that office, and no other; the surgeons consider it dishonourable to perform that operation. They seldom trepan; a surgeon who attempted to perform it, would himself be perhaps in want of it. To all flesh wounds they apply a powder called _coloradilla_, which certainly effects the cure; it is made of myrrh, mastic, dragon's blood, bol ammoniac, &c.--When persons of fashion are bled, their friends send them, as soon as it is known, little presents to amuse them all that day; for which reason, the women of easy virtue are often bled, that their lovers may shew their attention, and be _bled too_.--The French disease is so ignorantly treated, or so little regarded, that it is very general; they consider a _gonorrhoea_ as health to the reins
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111  
112   113   114   115   116   >>  



Top keywords:

health

 

surgeons

 

French

 

chocolate

 

perform

 

grandees

 

physicians

 

called

 

houses

 

Spaniards


office

 

sangerros

 
patients
 

thinking

 

pretensions

 
dishonourable
 

caressed

 

fevers

 

encourage

 
distemper

operation

 

subtile

 

equally

 

general

 
regarded
 

friends

 

fashion

 
gonorrhoea
 

ammoniac

 

persons


treated

 

ignorantly

 
virtue
 

lovers

 

disease

 

presents

 

reason

 
attention
 
wounds
 

seldom


trepan

 

surgeon

 

attempted

 

powder

 

mastic

 

dragon

 

effects

 
coloradilla
 

fruits

 

luxuries